Downtown Davis at on a warm February night. Photo by Kate Duren.
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I really love living in Davis. Having grown up in Washington DC, I thought I would remain a big city person for my entire life. I found all sorts of reasons to be intellectually and aesthetically excited at home with my parents, and in the city as a whole. My mom was a librarian, sparking my lifelong interest in reading, and my father was a theatre director, and then a film and theatre critic, sparking my lifelong interest in the performing arts.
I get to call upon both of these enthusiasms in the classroom and on Monday evenings with you fine people. Generally, I have found that Davis offers many of the attractions of a big city – a quorum of curious and cultured people, literary and theatrical attractions, almost enough live music, and a big university. I spent many more hours biking (and running) in DC than I did driving, so Davis feels comfortable to me in that respect, as well.
Children can sometimes be nuisances to business owners – certainly I was as a child and teenager – but as an adult I have found myself welcomed by the businesses in town. Perhaps that’s because we tend to spend all our money here. I have found de Vere’s Irish Pub to be a place where everyone knows your name, or at least my name, but the staff here are as conscientious as they are friendly.
Do you have favorite Davis businesses upon whom you depend?
With regard to realtors, for example, Chad DeMasi helped us sell and buy our last and current home, and he is well known in Davis for his excellent customer service. In 2014, we referred two friends to Chad to help sell their homes, and they were both extraordinarily pleased with the help they received from Chad.
Chad and his lovely wife Grace attend the Pub Quiz infrequently, for they have many duties and two energetic sons, but one local realtor who attends the Pub Quiz almost every week is Caitlin McCalla. Caitlin sits at my wife Kate’s table, proving herself to be knowledgeable about a wide variety of substantive and trivial topics, as well as Davis real estate. I would be glad to introduce you to her some Monday evening.
Kate and I see just about every movie that comes to the Varsity Theatre, for we remember well once having to drive to Sacramento to see artsy or independent films. Both The Varsity and Mishka’s Café, where I have met with hundreds of students over the decades, have provided swag for me to give away at the Pub Quiz.
Nina Gatewood of the Haute Again consignment shop has also provided gift certificates to players of our Pub Quiz. Nina has been active in promoting a thriving downtown for all of us to enjoy, and clothes options that take our city-wide “recycling” sentiment to heart. I appreciate anyone who gives us an alternative to some big box store in a suburban shopping plaza.
Professor John Iacovelli and others from the Department of Theatre and Dance attend the Pub Quiz most weeks, often with free tickets in hand for those teams who are lucky enough to win 4th place. For instance, a new production of the play Woyzeck by Georg Buchner, and adapted by Neil Labute, will be directed by Granada Artist in Residence Bob McGrath starting on February 26th. Perhaps John will join us tonight with more tickets to this show.
Tammy Hengel, owner of Davis Swim and Fitness in South Davis, provided free month gift certificates during most of 2014, and her generosity continues into 2015. That’s the gym where I catch up with my podcasts and with my running quotas. Perhaps I will see you there later this month.
The local fiction authors John Lescroart, Catriona McPherson, and Eileen Rendahl have all kindly donated their own books to the Pub Quiz effort, and then offered to sign them afterwards. Local compounding pharmacist Chuck Snipes has also donated books, games, and any number of doodads for me to share. He and his team have won more prize money from this Quiz than anyone else, so I suppose it is only fitting that they give back.
With regard to swag, I am just about out of rubber dinosaurs and frogs (thanks, Evan), though I seem to have an endless supply of academic books to share. If you know of a downtown Davis business that deserves to be highlighted for its good deeds, or for its donations to our weekly competition, please put them in touch with me. I also welcome your comments on YourQuizmaster.com.
Otherwise, I will start visiting the kids’ rooms in order to collect more of those offbeat white elephants that swag winners so appreciate.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about shoes, corporate headquarters, the attractions of western states, drumsticks, Iowa, astronomers and what they see, nails, pelicans, Nigerian athletes, people named Richard, doctors named Priscilla, Biblical quotations that become book titles, nails, summer projects, forgotten countries, sky, people who look like double rainbows to you, principal authors, art and art history, overlapping age-spans, Auguries of Peter and other anagram bait hints, touching articles about braces, cat men, the irascibility of Whoopi Goldberg, Carthaginians, unusual mathematics words, male horses, creatures that weigh less than camels, basketball, and Shakespeare. And happy 71st birthday to Alice Walker!
I hope you enjoyed last week’s newsletter about my daughter Geneva finally stepping out of her back brace for good. A version of that essay was published Saturday in the Sacramento Bee. If you subscribe to the paper version of the Bee – as I do the online version – I would love it if you could cut out the article from Saturday’s opinion page and bring it by the pub. I haven’t yet seen it in paper form.
Thanks, and see you tonight!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. In its slogan, what airline invites us to fly the friendly skies?
- Internet Culture. What icon of the golden era of electronics retailers was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange today, suggesting that even its store in Davis is not long for this world?
- Leadership Quotations. What L word finishes this quotation by Faye Wattleton. “The only safe ship in a storm is BLANK.” This question is easier than you might think.
- Four for Four. Which of the following Presidents of the United States, while in office, wore sideburns but no beards? John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant. You can imagine all the delightful muttonchops discussions that resulted from this question.
- Las Vegas. What naturally occurring optical phenomenon involving refracted light rays is also the name of a Las Vegas casino? The words “refraction” and “Las Vegas” don’t often appear together.
P.S. New UC Davis poetry professor Katie Peterson will be the featured performer on the February 19th Poetry Night at the Natsoulas Gallery. You should join us.